PILAS CONFERENCE 2015

University of Cambridge, 23 & 24 June

Over eighty delegates from a variety of universities gathered in Cambridge to discuss a broad range of research topics related to Latin America at this year’s PILAS Conference from Monday 22nd to Wednesday 24th of June. Participants were welcomed to Cambridge by a screening of Eugenio Polgovksy’s critically acclaimed documentary Los Herederos (Mexico, 2008) on Monday evening. Over the course of the following two days fifty-two delegates presented on a host of topics across seventeen conference panels and a poster display, maintaining the society’s welcoming, interdisciplinary atmosphere. Dr Mónica Moreno Figueroa (University of Cambridge) gave an excellent opening keynote highlighting the importance of research into racism in Latin America and it's relevance for wider international discussions on race and ethnicity in a "post-racial" context. Attendees benefited greatly from a lunchtime workshop on publishing in academic journals run by Professor Ann Varley, Dr Jasmine Gideon and Dr Geoffrey Kantaris, from the Bulletin of Latin American Research. On Tuesday evening, the editorial team of the magazine Street Signs, from the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College, ran a session on the new Latin American Special Edition of their magazine. We followed this with a Conference Dinner in the beautiful surroundings of Newnham College. Finally, we were very pleased that Professor James Dunkerley (QMUL) agreed to close the conference with a wide-ranging and stimulating keynote that directly addressed the conference’s broad theme of ‘Latin America on the World Stage’.